Faster WiFi: 802.11ac and 802.11ad

I must be out of touch with WiFi networking. The last thing I remember is when 802.11n came out and supported up to 72 Mbps network speeds. Last year, I think we finally jettisoned our last computing device that was 802.11g. Oh wait, I forgot about my home security system. It still uses an 802.11g 2 GHz network — the same frequency that commonly gets interference from microwave ovens, old bluetooth devices, cordless phones, baby monitors, and more.

While I’ve been “out of touch”, 802.11ac has become available. It operates at 5 Ghz and in most home networks, will run no faster than 800 Mbps. The iPhone 6 and LG Nexus 6 support 802.11ac. The 5 GHz frequency range gets less interference than the 2 GHz range.

In the next few years, WiGig (aka 802.11ad) will become available. It operates in the 60 GHz range, and supports streaming 4K video, and can offer throughput of up to 7 Gbit/s.

I look forward to faster WiFi. In the meantime, when I have the need for speed, I use a wired ethernet connection.